In a cellular communication system, a geographical region is divided into a number of cells served by base stations. The base stations are interconnected by a fixed network which can communicate data between the base stations. A mobile station is served via a radio communication link from the base station of the cell within which the mobile station is situated.
A typical cellular communication system extends coverage over an entire country and comprises hundreds or even thousands of cells supporting thousands or even millions of mobile stations. Communication from a mobile station to a base station is known as the uplink, and communication from a base station to a mobile station is known as the downlink.
The fixed network interconnecting the base stations is operable to route data between any two base stations, thereby enabling a mobile station in a cell to communicate with a mobile station in any other cell. In addition, the fixed network comprises gateway functions for interconnecting to external networks such as the Internet or the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), thereby allowing mobile stations to communicate with landline telephones and other communication terminals connected by a landline. Furthermore, the fixed network comprises much of the functionality required for managing a conventional cellular communication network including functionality for routing data, admission control, resource allocation, subscriber billing, mobile station authentication etc.
The most ubiquitous cellular communication system is the 2nd generation communication system known as the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM). GSM uses a technology known as Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) wherein user separation is achieved by dividing frequency carriers into 8 discrete time slots, which individually can be allocated to a user. Further description of the GSM TDMA communication system can be found in ‘The GSM System for Mobile Communications’ by Michel Mouly and Marie Bernadette Pautet, Bay Foreign Language Books, 1992, ISBN 2950719007.
Currently, 3rd generation systems are being rolled out to further enhance the communication services provided to mobile users. The most widely adopted 3rd generation communication systems are based on Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology. Both Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) techniques employ this CDMA technology. In CDMA systems, user separation is obtained by allocating different spreading and scrambling codes to different users on the same carrier frequency and in the same time intervals. In TDD, additional user separation is achieved by assigning different time slots to different users in a similar way to TDMA. However, in contrast to TDMA, TDD provides for the same carrier frequency to be used for both uplink and downlink transmissions. An example of a communication system using this principle is the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS). Further description of CDMA and specifically of the Wideband CDMA (WCDMA) mode of UMTS can be found in ‘WCDMA for UMTS’, Harri Holma (editor), Antti Toskala (Editor), Wiley & Sons, 2001, ISBN 0471486876.
In a 3rd generation cellular communication system, the communication network comprises a core network and a Radio Access Network (RAN). The core network is operable to route data from one part of the RAN to another, as well as interfacing with other communication systems. In addition, it performs many of the operation and management functions of a cellular communication system. The RAN is operable to support wireless user equipment over a radio link of the air interface. The RAN comprises the base stations, which in UMTS are known as Node Bs, as well as Radio Network Controllers (RNCs) which control the base stations and the communication over the air interface.
The RNC performs many of the control functions related to the air interface including radio resource management and routing of data to and from appropriate base stations. It further provides the interface between the RAN and the core network. An RNC and associated base stations are collectively known as a Radio Network Subsystem (RNS).
3rd generation cellular communication systems have been specified to provide a large number of different services including efficient packet data services. For example, downlink packet data services are supported within the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) release 5 Technical Specifications in the form of the High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) service.
In accordance with the 3GPP specifications, the HSDPA service may be used in both Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) mode and Time Division Duplex (TDD) mode.
In HSDPA, transmission code resources are shared amongst users according to their traffic needs. The base station (also known as the Node-B for UMTS) is responsible for allocating and distributing the HSDPA resources amongst the individual calls. In a UMTS system that supports HSDPA, some of the code allocation is performed by the RNC whereas other code allocation, or more specifically, scheduling is performed by the base station. Specifically, the RNC allocates a set of resources to each base station, which the base station can use exclusively for high speed packet services. The RNC furthermore controls the flow of data to and from the base stations. However, the base station is responsible for scheduling HS-DSCH transmissions to the mobile stations that are attached to it, for operating a retransmission scheme on the HS-DSCH channels, for controlling the coding and modulation for HS-DSCH transmissions to the mobile stations and for transmitting data packets to the mobile stations.
HSDPA seeks to provide packet access techniques with a relatively low resource usage and with low latency. Specifically, HSDPA uses a number of techniques in order to reduce the resource required to communicate data and to increase the capacity of the communication system. These techniques include Adaptive Coding and Modulation (AMC), retransmission with soft combining and fast scheduling performed at the base station.
HSDPA specifically employs a retransmission scheme known as Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (H-ARQ). In the H-ARQ scheme incremental redundancy is provided by a use of soft combining of data from the original transmission and any retransmissions of a data packet. Thus, when a receiver receives a retransmission, it combines the received information with information from any previous transmission of the data packet. The retransmissions may comprise retransmissions of the same channel data or different channel data may be transmitted. For example, retransmissions may comprise additional redundant data of a Forward Error Correcting (FEC) scheme. The additional encoding data may be combined with encoded data of previous transmissions and a decoding operation may be applied to the combined data. Hence, the retransmission may effectively result in a lower rate (higher redundancy) encoding of the same information data.
When a mobile station is involved in an HSDPA service, a number of control messages are transmitted from the mobile station to the single base station supporting the HSDPA service. For example, the mobile station may transmit retransmission acknowledge messages (Hybrid ARQ ACK/NACK messages) and indications of the quality of the communication channel (CQI—Channel Quality Indicators). These messages are transmitted on an HSDPA uplink control channel known as the HS-DPCCH (High Speed-Dedicated Physical Control CHannel).
Erroneous reception of HS-DPCCH may degrade the performance and efficiency of HSDPA services significantly. For example, any errors in the retransmission messages (the ACK/NACK messages) transmitted on the HS-DPCCH degrade the retransmission scheme resulting in reduced efficiency and increased resource consumption. Therefore, it is important for the retransmission feedback to be correctly received.
Specifically, ACK/NACK feedback for a data packet occupies one or multiple timeslots of the HS-DPCCH depending on whether repetition of the ACK/NACK message is applied or not. The ACK/NACK message is an uncoded binary value (mapped to +/−1) that occupies the entire timeslot by repetition over 10 symbols each having spreading factor 256 i.e. the effective spreading factor is equal to the number of chips in the slot which is 2560.
A non-zero detection threshold is typically employed for ACK/NACK detection in order to reduce the probability of detecting a non-transmission or a NACK message as an ACK message. This is desirable since, unlike the false detection of a NACK message which simply results in an additional HARQ re-transmission, the false detection of an ACK message means that the base station will not re-transmit a packet to a user equipment which has previously detected the packet in error. Hence, higher layer procedures (Radio Link Control procedures) are required to recover from false detection of ACK messages. However, these higher layer procedures are generally inefficient.
The ideal detection threshold is a function of the noise power on the ACK/NACK soft values. However, known methods for determining suitable thresholds for detecting retransmission feedback messages tend to be impractical and inaccurate and tend to lead to suboptimal detection performance in many scenarios.
Hence, an improved system for operating a retransmission scheme would be advantageous and in particular a system allowing increased flexibility, improved implementability, improved detection of retransmission feedback messages, reduced error rates, reduced resource consumption and/or improved retransmission performance would be advantageous.